Embeded linux

[Jane1]

I want to understand more how to make design of my own hardware device that will use linux. Are there any tutorials/good books? What rules must I follow? How BIOS must be written? Etc.
I found many sources how to write linux embeded software but very few sources how to design hardware that runs with linux.
Thanks

[Siddly]

I want to understand more how to make design of my own hardware device that will use linux. Are there any tutorials/good books? What rules must I follow? How BIOS must be written? Etc.
I found many sources how to write linux embeded software but very few sources how to design hardware that runs with linux.
Thanks

That's a tall order, especially writing a BIOS, however there are projects like the arduino that comes with a bootloader to get you started. there is the Teensy by pjrc.com, etc.
If you are thinking of starting from zero, pick a processor and get the manufacturer's manual - that would have all the details of input and output signals, assembler instructions, etc.
Then comes layout and production of a board, interfacing it, porting, building and loading the code .
If you've never done any of that stuff I'd recommend starting with something simple like Arduino or AVR where there are forums offering a great deal of help as well as ample tutorials and design files available on the net.

Hardware designers usually start with reading up the specs for various devices from different manufacturers, then getting stuck into studying the chosen device in detail from the device description manual.
Once the hardware is produced then porting the OS comes next. Think, a PC can be bought or put together from boards and you can then design your own OS if you so choose or you could install Windows, Linux, Solaris and many others.

[arunb]

Arduino does not come close to describing an embedded OS system, in fact it does not even have an OS. Its basically hardware with a micro-controller, users need to program the micro-controller to do various jobs.

Try BeagleBoard from Texas Instruments, BeagleBoard is a single board PC, that contains a fanless OMAP micro-processor, interface for a VGA monitor, USB ports, ethernet port, serial/parallel port. The entire card is small (half the size of post card). The card runs out of +5V DC supply.

The BeagleBoard website (beagleboard.org) has excellent documentation for installing Ubuntu, Windows CE on to this computer, plus there are numerous resources that you can use to develop applications for this computer.

Apart from this the BeagleBoard design is open source, if necessary you can download schematics, parts list etc and make the board yourself.

For a single board computer based project BeagleBoard is the best in the market.

thanks
a

[Siddly]

Arduino does not come close to describing an embedded OS system, in fact it does not even have an OS. Its basically hardware with a micro-controller, users need to program the micro-controller to do various jobs.

Try BeagleBoard from Texas Instruments, BeagleBoard is a single board PC, that contains a fanless OMAP micro-processor, interface for a VGA monitor, USB ports, ethernet port, serial/parallel port. The entire card is small (half the size of post card). The card runs out of +5V DC supply.

The BeagleBoard website (beagleboard.org) has excellent documentation for installing Ubuntu, Windows CE on to this computer, plus there are numerous resources that you can use to develop applications for this computer.

Apart from this the BeagleBoard design is open source, if necessary you can download schematics, parts list etc and make the board yourself.

For a single board computer based project BeagleBoard is the best in the market.

thanks
a

Of course, some teams start with the Beagleboard design and work out their own solutions - like the Hawkboard.
I have the Beagleboard C3 and the XM. My main aim was to construct a neat portable Software Defined Radio (SDR) box.
A few days ago I hooked up my HiQSDR to the XM via a USB network dongle of the same type I use on the openSUSE box but it was seriously underpowered. My next try will be to connect a Softrock SDR which uses a USB sound card, the internal sound card and a USB control connection to see if it's less demanding.
I'm running Ubuntu on the XM and as far as I can tell it seems as fast as Angstrom but I've not seen any benchmarks comparing them.
For +5V power I use a +5V 5A P.S from a disk subsystem, I also have +5V 30A and 100A P.S's around - a good idea for a Beagleboard supercomputer?.